I never really expected to get into motorcycles as a kid. I surely never expected to drag race motorcycles. Yet I have been riding and racing bikes for over 35 years now. Life is funny that way.

I bought my first bike in 1973. The world of motorcycling has changed a lot since then.

That first bike was a Suzuki TS-185 enduro. I needed some inexpensive transportation and it felt fast on a test ride. After the engine was broke in I took it to the local drag strip and ran it down. My times were not very impressive. I then bought a motorcross bike and made some modifications to it. I took the MXer to the track a number of times and learned how to drag race on it.

Within a year or so I graduated to a used Suzuki T-500 two stroke twin. The hot bikes of the day were the Kawasaki H1 500cc two stroke triple, it’s bigger brother the 750cc H2 and the killer bike of the day, the new 900cc Z1. The Honda 750 had been eclipsed in performance by a number of other bikes and the magazines were saying good things about the Norton 850 Commando and it’s 12.8 second quarter mile.

With thirteen second quarter miles, in the mid sized class the H1 was the bike to beat. The first time I took my T-500 to the track I ran a quarter in the low 14 second range. To my surprise I was running quicker than the 500 Kawasakis. My second time out I won my class. With some porting, a set of pipes and a set of wheelie bars I eventually got the bike to run twelve seconds flat. I was proud of that since most of the Z1s were running 12.40s.

I had a friend with a Kawasaki H2 with a set of pipes that he claimed ran in the elevens. I rode the bike once and when it hit the power band big wheelies were immediate. In those days an eleven second quarter mile was considered awesome - the cut off point for the “pro” bracket class was 11.99 seconds.

The baddest bike at Seattle International Raceway was Jim Fox’s Kawasaki H2 dragbike. Jim was running 10.80s at about 128 mph. The track announcers when nuts when he came up to the line, going on about how only a crazy guy would ride a ten second bike.

In 1978 Suzuki  released it’s new GS-1000. The bike would run an 11.8 second quarter mile. The magic zone on a stock bike - I was one of the first in town to buy one. More on my GS in a future blog.